Thomas Dambo
DETROIT LAKES, Minn. — Just off the beach in the heart of Detroit Lakes Thursday, volunteers put the finishing touches on one of the trolls that have been very public the last few days. World renowned artist Thomas Dambo is the heart and soul behind this recycling art. “Over the last decade, I have built 138 giant recycled sculptures in 17 countries and 19 American states all across the world. And I make them in a treasure hunt, so I hide them,” Dambo said. Just outside Detroit Lakes, deep in the woods, a treasure hunt is about to begin next week, during which residents can search for Dambo’s trolls. The trolls are made of recycled wood and other materials from all over the world. They are now in Detroit Lakes, so we went on a hunt. People can start looking for the trolls in Detroit Lakes on Monday, June 10. Until then, their locations are top secret.
Concrete is perhaps the most commonly used building material in the world. With a bit of tweaking, it could help to power our homes too. On a laboratory bench in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a stack of polished cylinders of black-coloured concrete sit bathed in liquid and entwined in cables. To a casual observer, they aren’t doing much. But then Damian Stefaniuk flicks a switch. The blocks of human-made rock are wired up to an LED – and the bulb flickers into life. …Despite some new discoveries of lithium reserves, the finite supply of this material… has driven the search for alternative battery materials. This is where Stefaniuk and his concrete come in. He and his colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way of creating an energy storage device known as a supercapacitor from three basic, cheap materials – water, cement and a soot-like substance called carbon black.
